Potato Soup

Afternoon Everyone!

Quite a few years ago, a friend and I were cleaning out a storeroom when we were working for an After School Care Centre.  It obviously hadn’t been cleaned out for years so we were trying to cull and organise everything as best we could.  Things that looked old and out of date went straight in the bin.  This is where I discovered this recipe book: 

It is old and tattered but in the loved kind of way.  So I fished it out and realised that it was one of those handmade recipe books where different people contribute their favourite recipes.  I adore these kinds of books as individuals only put in their absolute best recipes.  Over the past 5 years or so I have made some of these recipes and they have been utterly delicious!  So my aim is to try out every recipe in this book.  I will have to convert some ingredients over to the metric system but I think that this will be a fun cooking adventure.  So, here we go.  The first recipe that I will try is:

I did modify this recipe to suit my own tastes.  I didn’t add as much salt as 3 tablespoons seems like a lot and I like to add my own garlic salt later.  I also added some pepper and substituted the parsley and some of the milk for cream and chives.  I love cheese so I added in heaps more than the recipe suggested.  So this is the final recipe that I made:

Potato Soup

1 cup chopped onion
1 tablespoon oil
4 cups chicken stock
2 cups diced potato
½ teaspoon salt (or according to taste)
½ teaspoon pepper (or according to taste)
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons flour
½ cup milk
½ cup cream
½ cup grated cheese
1 tablespoon chives

In a saucepan, cook onions in the oil until they are soft, not browned.  Add stock, potatoes, salt, pepper, and sugar and bring to the boil.  Simmer for half an hour.  Blend mixture and return to the saucepan.  Mix the flour with the milk thoroughly, add to the soup.  Add the cream.  Stir until boiling and simmer for 5 mins.  Stir in the cheese and chives.

Now that it is coming into winter this is a wonderful comfort food.  It tastes so good and wholesome and can be frozen for those cold winter nights where you just don’t want to cook.  The only thing that could possibly make this recipe any better is some bacon off the bone.  I am looking forward to having the left overs already!